


first blood

by tesselations



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Death, First Time, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-23
Updated: 2014-05-08
Packaged: 2018-01-20 13:13:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1511777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tesselations/pseuds/tesselations
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: "Hawke and co. have to kill on a damn near daily basis, but it probably wasn't always almost second nature to them. Who struggled with the necessity, and who knew what had to be done right off?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hawke

Even years later, he will remember that day with oddly splintered clarity. He had accompanied Bethany to the marketplace of the town they had been in for a few months, which was more of a circle of stalls than anything else. They had been in town for only a few weeks, not long enough to get to know the townspeople but long enough for Bethany to try to make small talk with all the shopkeepers.

The tailor had invited her to look at some new bolts of cloth that had just been delivered, and Garrett waited at a distance, wiry and awkward in his new, seventeen-year-old frame. He watched his baby sister fondly, his smile matching the one she wore as she pored over fabrics she would never get to wear. His reverie was only broken by the nudge at his side, as an old man leaned with his hot, rank breath, 

“Don’t look too close at that one. She one of them freaks, you know. Templars gonna pick ‘er up soon, danger to us normal folk,” he mumbled in Garrett’s ear, and every muscle in his body tensed. Garrett can’t remember what he said in response, only the feeling of the man’s collar clenched in his fists as he dragged him off into an alley, and the sharp screech he abruptly cut off with a small burst of lightning straight into his heart. 

Garrett turned the corner, picked Bethany up, and took her back home to the ragged cottage they were living in. He proceeded to spend the next hour sick with anxiety in bathroom, while Carver jeered outside the door. That night, after Malcolm came home and the twins went to sleep, Garrett sat gangly and hunched over himself at the kitchen table, rubbing the stubble on his jaw that he had been trying to grow out.

“We have to go,” he told his father, his brow furrowed in a pale imitation of the creases on Malcolm’s forehead. His father, clear-eyed and prematurely graying, only nodded and tightened his grip on the staff he disguised as a walking stick. He didn’t ask why.


	2. Anders

Despite shockingly common belief, Anders was not a Templar killer. 

He wasn’t an anything killer, actually. It was his fourth time running away from the circle, and since his first three escapes to nearby townships had been obviously unsuccessful, he had thought he’d try something new and go where no one would expect him to. That is, he had made a spur of the moment choice to run away from any kind of civilization, hoping it would throw the Templars off his trail. If he were a Templar killer, this all would have been more straightforward. 

That had been almost a week ago, and he was still in the woods with his food all gone and his stomach grumbling. He flopped down into a pile of leaves, reveling in the crunching sounds they made beneath his body, and stretched out like a cat in the late autumn sun. The first time he had done this the breeze had been exotic, the mud-scented, fresh air almost sensual. Now more than five days later, the crisp bite of fall was overshadowed by the bite of hunger.

Anders heard a rustling in the leaves near him. Sure that it wasn’t him, and that it wasn’t Templars—they made much more noise—he turned his head ever so slightly. There was a rabbit not far from him, sniffing the air with a velvet nose. An idea came to mind.

Without saying a word, which was a feat in itself for Anders, he crooked a finger and shot a thin crackle of lightning at the rabbit. It made a horrible noise and dropped solidly to the ground.

Anders’ stomach dropped, and he went to pick it up, his hunger tempered by the disquiet he felt at seeing the rabbit’s body, still and silent. He put one hand on its furry side, still warm with recent life, and drew back as if he were the one shocked. 

After vomiting in the brush, he turned his back to the rabbit, and with determination, tried to figure out how to skin it. He did a terrible job, broke one of its legs, and had to vomit in the bush again, but finally managed to clean it well enough to roast over a small fire. He could barely enjoy the taste of the meat, overwhelmed with guilt and nausea as he was.

\---

The next morning, he heard the clanking of Templar boots, and thought about the smoke from his fire and the pile of rabbit bones with regret. 

Anders went with them when they found him. He wasn’t a Templar killer, after all, he was barely a rabbit killer. It wasn’t until the day the Warden hastily recruited him that he would kill anything larger than a rabbit, and even then, the first night he spent in Vigil’s Keep he stayed awake with a blend of shocked relief and guilt.

Years later, he would be able to look at the ashes of a Chantry without a pang in his stomach. He would tell Hawke the story of the first animal he purposefully killed, and Hawke would bury his nose in the feathers of Anders pauldrons and pretend he was laughing instead of crying.


	3. Carver & Bethany

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a little bit different this time

Malcolm taught Bethany how to kill a hare with magic, and how to skin it after. He told her never to use magic if she didn’t absolutely have to—but to use it when she had real need.

She looks soft and sweet, and she is, but a girl has to eat, and rabbit and turnip stew is one of Carver’s favorite dishes. She sneaks him a bowl before the rest of the family sits down for supper. He’s growing much faster and larger than her now, and he’s always hungry.

She watches Carver as he slurps down the stew. He winks at her and she smiles, and they sit next to each other at the dinner table while her big brother hogs the limelight. She can feel Carver tense next to her.

“Well you know what I’ve heard,” he said, breaking the conversation between Leandra and her eldest son “People have been seeing a lot of darkspawn around lately. There’s word a Blight is going on or something.”

“That has nothing to do with what—“ Garrett starts, but Leandra cuts him off.

“A Blight? Maker, if only your father was here,” she murmurs. Garrett scowls, and Carver shrugs.

“We’re gonna need to be able to fight the darkspawn if they come,” he says sullenly.

“Like you could fight darkspawn,” Garrett chortled. “You going to glare at them till they drop dead? Swing that sword around and hit yourself in the head?” Carver bristled. 

“I’ve been improving. Ser Jena says I’ve come a long way,” he snapped. Bethany knew he was. He had shown her the practice dummies he tore apart during his lessons. 

“You wouldn’t be able to kill one if you tried,” he shot back. “It’s not as easy as you think.”

\---

A month later, recruiters are in Lothering. Carver comes back with a scroll and a purse full of coins that make a satisfying clink against the scrubbed pine surface of the kitchen table.

“Where did you get that Carver?” Leandra asks, alarmed. Carver straightens his back.

“The recruiter. I’m joining up,” he declares. Leandra groans, and the fight they have lasts most of the night. But the next morning, Carver is at the door, his armor polished and oiled and his sword strapped to his back.

“Be safe,” Bethany whispers, pressing herself to his broad chest. The panels of his armor fit oddly against her body. 

“You be safe,” Carver says instead of reassuring her. The hug is awkward for a moment, until he pulls her tighter and she sobs into his chest plate and the scarf around her neck. She hugs Garrett goodbye too, but it isn’t the same, it’s like Garrett was made to wear the armor that fit so strangely on Carver. 

\---

When she gets her twin’s letter about killing darkspawn, she’s already killed three that found the house that week. She thinks of Carver’s hands, the way they shake and the way his knuckles go white when he’s nervous. She knows that he won’t tell her that he was scared, because Garrett might read the letter and because he doesn’t have to, she knows.

She knows because she wasn’t scared. Her aim with her fireballs was impeccable, and she can imagine how Carver’s hands shook around the grip of his sword, imagine the way it swings when she swings her staff in an arc and freezes a darkspawn in its place.

Ostagar happens before his next letter arrives. She doesn’t get to read about how he had to kill a deserter who tried to kill him for his sword. She will never know how he couldn’t sleep that night, because he wasn’t sure if he had done the right thing, killing a desperate man. If she had known, she wouldn’t have been surprised by how he agonized over the dead man’s body. Carver was never sure if he did the right thing, no matter what that thing was. 

She sticks an ice spike clean through the ogre that crushed her brother, just because he tried to protect his family. She doesn’t hesitate when it comes to killing darkspawn, and she doesn’t think she’ll be afraid of killing a human--- not that she wants to, farthest thing from it, but a girl has got to live and it’s a cruel world out there. She’ll be guilty, but she’ll do what she must. 

\---

When she pulls her staff out to help her eldest brother quell a riot in the Gallows, she realizes she was wrong. Some of the Fereldan deserters wear armor like Carver, and her hands shake around her staff and she freezes in place. Bethany wouldn’t have doubted what she was doing, but Carver would have. And Carver’s gone now, so she’ll have to doubt for the both of them.


	4. Sebastian

As a young man, Sebastian had gotten himself involved in some fairly unsavory activity. He had gambled and cheated with bandits in seedy pubs and barely escaped debts that he refused to pay. He had stolen, not because he had to, but because he had the quick, deft fingers of a rogue and the purposeless, razor-sharp unruliness of a child left in the shadows to simmer in his own envy. He was the terror of his father’s vassals, whose daughters he made quiver with desire. He had lied to his mother and gotten in drunken fights with prostitutes. 

He was not proud of it now. There had been a time he would have been, a time when he would have downed his ale in one swallow and wiped the foam off of his upper lip and smiled a wicked smile as he recounted his exploits.

But that had been before the Chantry. Before Elthina. Before he had turned in that life, of aimless debauchery, for a life of quiet and study and introspection. Now, Sebastian was a man of the cloth, as he told himself, no matter what he had done before, no matter what sins he confessed to the Maker.

He had committed all kinds of crimes, moral and legal affronts to the Maker before he had repented. But none had amounted to the one he committed when he signed that first poster, offering gold for the deaths of the Flint Company men. 

Elthina had begged him not to, of course. He had just been finding peace. The Maker had laid a warm hand on his shoulder, and for a moment, Sebastian thought it might be enough. That the Chantry could do what years of misspent youth could not, give him meaning, give him sanctuary. And it had.

But his family members’ deaths changed everything. When he thought about Meghan, and her small hands and blue eyes, he could feel his chest tighten.

He broke two feather quills with the force of his anger, before he even finished the first proclamation. His handwriting, usually elegant and clean, was shaky and furious, gouging deep creases in the thick paper.

But by the time he reached the last leaf of paper, it was cold and clear as a winter’s dawn, and Sebastian’s mind was made up. Elthina begged him not to hang the poster, but he did anyway, his mind a steel edge of fury.

Hawke’s magic and his brother’s blade may have struck the killing blows, but Sebastian’s pen and Sebastian’s gold had killed those men. 

He prayed, but the words rang hollow.


	5. Fenris

Fenris doesn’t remember the first time he killed someone. He doesn’t know if he killed people before his tattoos, he knows he definitely did after, and that the sick noise of flesh beneath his blade has never bothered him, that blood and bones have never made his stomach churn. He can’t remember the first man he killed, even after the tattoos—they all fade together, and all he is left with is the sound of bones splintering. 

He remembers Bethany’s face when she first visited him with Hawke, and saw the bodies on his doorstep. Fenris has never read a book, but the lines of horror and nausea in her honest open face unsettled him more than Hawke’s jokes about skeletons in the closet. He’s never reacted that way to dead bodies.

He doesn’t throw them out for ages.

The crooked angles of their limbs don’t bother him. The sickly perfume of death is something he’s carried with him for longer than he knows. He remembers the snapping noise one slaver’s legs made under the force of his blade, the wet gurgle of another as he choked to death on blood, and the memories are crisp and clean and make him feel nothing at all.

Sometimes he wonders what kind of man he was before the tattoos, what Danarius made him do, but his body moves with a grace and fury that tells him he doesn’t want to know. His hands know where to twist to break a man’s neck; with feral eyes, he can pinpoint the carotid artery on Anders’ neck when the mage gets agitated.

At night, he stares at the roof and tries to remember his past. He tries to focus on things that he might have known back then—the warmth of the sun in Danarius’ pavilion, the warmth of a mothers touch, he tries—

but all he remembers it the pain he felt when he woke up, the scars in his arms, barely visible next to the white lines carved into his flesh, from when he tried to dig the lyrium out with his fingernails, and further back than that, the smell of blood.

When Fenris tears Hadriana’s heart out of her ribcage, hot and wet in his hand, and it beats in time with the pulse in his thumb, it feels almost like the first time.


End file.
